Tompkins County adopted technology that creates efficiencies, reduces costs, and helps it serve its citizens in a socially and environmentally sustainable way.

We’re currently looking to migrate the district attorney’s office from a legacy case management system onto NYPTI, a state system developed by the New York State Prosecutors Training Institution. Laserfiche will be integrated with NYPTI, so case documents will be created in NYPTI and archived in the Laserfiche repository. Documents will be digital from the very start, eliminating the need for paper records.

While the IT department is mapping out the streamlined case-management process and preparing to integrate Laserfiche and NYPTI, it is also expanding the WiFi access points in the courtrooms so that the district attorneys and assistant district attorneys can access their case files using mobile devices.

The sheriff’s department has also benefited. In the past, the staff had to navigate a roomful of arrest reports by using an index-card system to find what they needed. After digitizing the arrest reports, the department transformed its records room into viable office space and cleared the paper out of its garage so officers have a place to park.

Committed to Innovation

We believe that we’re a forward-thinking county, adopting technology that creates efficiencies, reduces costs and, ultimately, helps us serve the citizens of Tompkins County in a socially and environmentally sustainable way.

Toward that end, our county vehicles are hybrids, and our new county buildings are all LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design)-certified. One of our major goals for the next few years is to use our enterprise records management system to enable 10 to 20 percent of our employees to work from home at least part of the time. This will allow us to cut back on the number of people driving to work, and it will save energy at county buildings.

From a disaster recovery perspective, giving key employees remote access to digital documents will allow them to do their jobs from their homes in the event of an emergency. We never want to be featured on the front page of the newspaper with the caption: ‘Why didn’t they plan ahead for this emergency?’” Thanks to Laserfiche, we never will.

About the authors:

Maureen Reynolds is the records management officer and deputy county clerk for the Tompkins County, N.Y., Clerk’s Office, where she has worked for 21 years.

Greg Potter is the director of IT services for the county.

Loren Cottrell, deputy director of IT services, has worked in local government for the past 10 years.